The Albatross
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Bird - Robin:
Explanation//
It's clear from the video that the robin has a huge impact on the behaviour of the man, and therefore, on the listener. We also have an emotional connection to the man as our human instinct is to help is as we know he's suffering.
To give the robin a sense of presence within the clip, I layered up multiple sounds together and tried to make it sound as realistic as possible.
Robin Call:
Whistling//
I wanted to make the robin sound as natural as possible - little editing and a naturally produced noise. I decided to produce this sound by whistling instead of going out and recording birds in their natural habitat. The reason for this is that recording wild birds would also give me background ambience - something that is not suited to this clip. The sound of trees rustling, or more than one bird, could potentially throw off the listener/viewer and confuse them.
This sound was created with my mouth. I gathered spit in front of my tongue, positioned lips into a whistle position and breathed inwards. I did inhalations instead of exhalations, one because of mic positioning - it could have clipped the mic and caused distortion/unwanted noise, the second reason was because I wanted to give the sound movement (spit), exhalation would've just sounded messy and probably sent it out of my mouth. The final reason was because, timbrally, it sounded more natural, leading to a cleaner tone.
Editing this sound was fairly simple as I want it to sound as natural as possible. I added small amounts of reverb to give the sound space and removed all of the low-end frequencies.
Robin Movement:
Flutter//
This was an interesting sound as, depending on material, each sound produced was slightly different. To create something that I was proud of, that gave enough realism to the clip, took several attempts with multiple materials from standard A4 paper to wrapping paper.
I recorded a small pack of A8 paper and placed them between finger and thumb. I then wafted them at quite a fast speed to give the impact of wings fluttering. This was doubled up with the same effect but with wrapping paper instead. 'Flutter 1' was created by wafting a pack of A8 paper.
Similar to before, I wanted minimal editing on each sound to keep it simple. I double tracked the flutter. The first one has a small amount of reverb on it and echo to give it a sense of presence. The second flutter has the same effects as the first one but is dropped down by 12 semitones
